Increase Email Open Rates on Gmail

By now everyone knows abut the new tabs on Gmail and how they are affecting email open rates! The blog is about conversion rate optimisation and there is no doubt that by increasing open rates in Gmail you will increase the amount of conversions (therefore we’re covering it!).

If you have a great list then email marketing can be really profitable for you. Usually conversion rates are high and the monthly subscription fee is usually low to use the software. According to research from Mailchimp, open rates for Gmail since the introduction of the tabs has reduced open rates by around 10% (open rates dropping from around 15% to 13.5%).

Examples of how businesses trying to affect open rates

I subscribe to the Moz Newsletter (which I advise those interested in SEO to subscribe to as it contains a ton of useful information). It caught my eye at the end of the email that they are encouraging you to drag the email into the ‘Primary’ tab. They use a nice graphic to make it clear and simple to understand. Of course, the benefit being that future emails will appear in the ‘Primary’ tab and therefore open rates will increase in Gmail.

Encouraging the user to drag the email into the ‘Primary’ tab

I will update this post as I see other businesses and retailers try and encourage users to move emails to the primary tab.

A fan of all things conversion related! Been working in SEO since 2005 and over time become more interested in the conversion side of online marketing. Away from the screen, I'm a big sports fan, with a mild interest in Tranmere Rovers and a love of traveling!

About Darrell Freeman

I'm the founder of Convertify! I've been working in the online marketing industry for over 8 years now for companies such as National Computing Centre, Moneysupermarket.com and Wiggle. My passion is now conversion rate optimisation, developing split tests to improve conversions. You can follow my tweets @convertify and my posts on Google+

Happy to have helped…

After 3 months of working with Convertify we have seen conversion increases of 95%! It has been an immense learning curve and a lot of work to get to this level. Feedback from our customers compliment the new navigation, product information, fast checkout and easy to find information.